S3 Blog

The public sector has a number of distinctive points that separate it from private business. It generally has less money and is accountable for all of it to every individual paying into the tax system; it is rightly awash with rules on confidentiality and its data points overlap.

The classic picture of the martial arts expert from a 1970s film is of the small guy advanced upon by heavies, who can clearly make mincemeat of him very quickly. He then (and in the 1970s it would have been “he”) pulverises them because he has mastered the art of turning an enemy’s strength against him.

By now, most IT professionals have seen and understood the potential benefits of Big Data. The problem often is the time it takes to get to the value that is apparently on offer. This is possibly truer in the public sector than anywhere else, where strictures on how data may be used are rightly robust.

A lot of commentators over the last decade have suggested that collaboration and sharing make life a lot easier. To a very large extent this is quite right, but the technologies and governance behind making it happen can be daunting.

Flash storage is any type of data or storage system that uses flash memory. Flash memory is a kind of memory that retains data in the absence of a power supply, basically unlike other forms of storage flash can retain information when the power is switched off.

A common question asked these days is, is tape back-up on its way out? With the introduction of Flash and SSD storage, and most recently Cloud based technologies, it does raise the question of is there still a use for the classic tape.